The Tyne-Wear Derby is back. Sunderland and Newcastle United will face off in the FA Cup on the first Saturday of 2024. I think the Tyne-Wear Derby is special. It’s not the atmosphere, or the strength of the support for two of English football's great underachievers, or the football memories that make it unique. Instead it’s remarkable that after a near eight-year hiatus not many missed it. It's a fixture that almost no-one wanted, and the region definitely did not need.
Newcastle United have won two of the last thirteen games between the two sides. Sunderland have won seven of those fixtures and in five of those wins managed to prevent their opponents from scoring. It’s was Sunderland’s decade following similar domination in the 00’s by Newcastle. Yet many Mags greeted this draw with dread rather than an opportunity to put right the wrongs of ‘six in a row’.
For many NUFC fans this is simply a ‘no win’ scenario. The ‘six in a row’ string of victories was far less damaging to Geordies than most Sunderland fans realised because it clearly aided Sunderland’s fall from grace to the third tier.
Sunderland have finished above Newcastle United in only five of the last 33 seasons. There isn’t an inferiority complex to get over and a Sunderland victory would be a small part in a season that has had bigger games for NUFC.
That said, this game does matter a lot to many fans, but the actual cup tie aspect is as important to many supporters as much as anything. Many Newcastle fans see the FA Cup as a vital part in a season that promised so much yet looks to be heading off the rails.
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Sunderland go into the game as huge underdogs as the team playing their football in the second tier. As big as a win here would be for local pride, their motivation is promotion as soon as possible. Form and quality are supposed to be the victims of derby football, making it more unpredictable and therefore exciting.
Sunderland’s string of six victories against their neighbours came while they were below them in the table. Each victory was achieved while either being in the relegation zone or just outside of it.
There’s a chance this time that the gap is just too big, and their own recent indifferent form, which cost Tony Mowbray his job, seems to have many fans pessimistic that they can get a win. Add in a young squad with talent but the ability to be bullied physically and there’s a far greater fear of humiliation amongst mackems than an upset.
And that’s just the football side of things. Such a high-profile fixture needing to be organised at short notice has been less than ideal for the clubs, the police and local authorities.
After a couple of years of campaigning together in 2014 Sunderland and Newcastle fans managed to get rid of so called ‘bubble matches’ whereby supporters were treated like potential criminals and made to travel together only on police approved and monitored methods of transport to games.
These transport requirements have swiftly returned to secure Newcastle a 6,000-strong allocation. Sunderland fans have reacted furiously to their own supporters needing to be moved from the North Stand to accommodate so many visitors. The arrangements may have been the best of a difficult situation by both clubs but have left neither set of fans particularly happy.
Yet it’s off the field where this derby has proved incredibly toxic. During the run of six victories for Sunderland there have been a string of off-field dramas involving two (at the time) largely toxic football clubs.
The 2024 version of the Tyne-Wear Derby has already been tainted by a Sunderland fans group fundraising for a giant card display chowing ‘no blood on our hands.’ This is the kind of tribal nonsense that has affected this fixture for so much of the last decade.
It’s almost certain that the people behind it will have always have cared little (if at all) for the victims of the Saudi State and it’s well documented and accepted human rights abuses. This is the latest instalment in the desperate ‘we’re better than you’ derby where on pitch failure has resulted in toxic off-field rivalry.
The idea that Sunderland fans are ‘better’ people because of who owns their club can be added to a strong list of bizarre fan arguments surrounding the fixture, including how reasonable it was to hire a manger with openly fascist sympathies in Paolo Di Canio.
There’s also the player who scored in the fixture being arrested, charged and prosecuted for sexual activity with a child, and repeated fan violence including a police horse being attacked.
All of these incidents were debated and defended depending on who fans supported and who the perpetrators played for. No act was indefensible if it reflected badly on ‘your tribe’. Much of that toxicity bled onto the pitch and into the stands. It would appear ‘human rights’ is the 2024 version of this venomous rivalry that has failed to produce so often on the pitch.
A derby no-one wanted or needed, apart from perhaps neutrals and TV broadcasters. Hope we smash them though.
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